The Armenian Vision of St. Nersēs and its Latin Version: Text, Transmission History, Translation

This article explores a prophecy that crossed enormous geographical distances in its original language – Armenian – but was known also in a Latin translation: the Vision of St. Nersēs. It is through this prophecy that the designation ‘nation of the archers’ was applied to the Mongols and became something of a technical term. This paper focuses on a specific versions of the Vision – the one that served as the Vorlage of its fourteenth century Latin translation. It also provides an English translation of that version and discusses the relationship of the Armenian original and the Latin translation for the first time. This represents also the first time that this specific version of the Vision of St. Nersēs is published academically, with comments and analysis.